AACVD of CuN on AlO Using CuCl and NH.

CuN has been grown on m-AlO by aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition using 0.1 M CuCl in CHCHOH under an excess of NH at 600 °C, which led to the deposition of Cu that was subsequently converted into CuN under NH: O at 400 °C in a two-step process without exposure to the ambient. The reaction of CuCl with an excess of NH did not lead to the growth of CuN, which is different to the case of halide vapor phase epitaxy of III-V semiconductors. The CuN layers obtained in this way had an anti-ReO cubic crystal structure with a lattice constant of 3.8 Å and were found to be persistently n-type, with a room temperature carrier density of n = 2 × 10 cm and mobility of µ = 32 cm/Vs. The surface depletion, calculated in the effective mass approximation, was found to extend over ~0.15 µm by considering a surface barrier height of ϕ = 0.4 eV related to the formation of native CuO.